The present invention relates to a disk player with a disk transport mechanism, and more particularly, to a disk player having a carriage and tray transport mechanism for transporting a disk from a position outside the disk player to a disk reader within the disk player.
Disk players are available with magazines for holding a plurality disks where the disks in the magazine can be selectively played. This type of disk player is referred to herein as a changer-type player. The magazines of such disk players are often removable from the disk player. When the magazine is mounted in the disk player, a selected disk in the magazine is transported to an optical reader for playing.
Various types of this kind of changer-type player have been proposed and marketed. An example of such a disk player is disclosed is U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,001. The disclosed disk player provides carriages for holding disks which are transported between an ejection, a playback, and a storage position, wherein the storage position locates a selected disk positioned within the magazine. The disks are arranged concentrically within the magazine and the magazine moves in a first direction perpendicular to the disks and relative to a disk reader. Disks are transported in a straight line in a second direction, perpendicular to the first direction, by a disk transport mechanism. Disks in the playback position are completely removed from the magazine by the disk transport mechanism for the purpose of playing. Disks accepted at the eject position are transported on a carriage held by a moving tray to the playback position where the disks are then lifted frown the tray and played.
The above design provides for efficiency in operation and offers the advantage of playing a selected disk or a sequence of disks from the magazine without manual handling. However, the locating of independent eject, playback, and storage positions in a single plane requires a larger depth dimension then is desirable and interferes with producing a compact design. One alternative is to position the magazine to the side of the playback position instead of in-line with the playback position. This alternative however does not permit efficient design of the transport mechanism because transport from the magazine to the playback position is in a different direction than transprt from the playback to the eject position thereby requiring redundant mechanisms which increase the cost of production. Therefore, other design architectures are sought to further reduce the size of the disk player.